Estimates are still coming in on the number of protesters who took to the streets across America for Saturday’s “No Kings” protests. Elliot Morris estimates 4-6 million. Heather Cox Richardson writes:
In a dramatic rejection of Trump’s consolidation of power, at least five million Americans turned out for peaceful protests across the country. Cities turned out huge numbers of protesters at more than 2,000 planned events, and small towns, including those in Republican-dominated states, also boasted rallies. The mood was festive as people held signs with anti-Trump and pro-American images and slogans and sang Woody Guthrie’s famous American anthem, “This Land Is Your Land.” American flags were everywhere.
MoveOn this morning reminds members that one and done is not enough:
Each week, hundreds of thousands more people are joining the movement. But this is just the beginning, and we can’t afford to slow down now.
Historians who study social movements worldwide have coined the “3.5% rule”—that throughout history, few authoritarian governments have withstood 3.5% of their population peacefully mobilized against them in a sustained way.6 The rule helps us understand just how big our movement needs to get to stop Trump’s tyranny—on the order of more than 11 million people showing up again and again.
What I think we should take away from the last month or two is that basic, mainline liberal, anti-fascist messaging is energizing and persuasive when it is amplified. The resistance did not find some new, special, focus grouped way to talk—the messaging for No Kings was more or less what we’ve been saying for a decade now. The difference was we said it louder.
It’s not that the left lacks any good message. It’s that we lack the means for getting those messages heard in a media ecosystem largely owned by conservatives. As the saying goes, Democrats but TV ads; Republicans buy TV stations. (That’s not formal party organizations but their well-heeled supporters.) On top of that, Buckle observes, “The right pays its propagandists, we do not.”
He offers a familiar critique of the left (and its deepest-pocketed supporters) not properly funding voices and building reach.
Mainline liberalism has been pushed out of the conversation, and we need to push our way back in. Both to rebalance the anti-Trump coalition, and because those not in the fight need to hear a message that blames fascists for fascism. Cautious steps forward will not cut it. In the words of an older liberalism, our circumstances demand bold persistent experimentation.
In the short term, we have to stay in the streets. Pay attention for the next day(s) of protest.
Vance Boelter captured on Sunday night. (Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
Minnesota authorities overnight apprehended the suspect sought in the Saturday shootings of two Democratic state politicians and their spouses. The two-day manhunt concluded in a field southwest of Minneapolis (Associated Press):
Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was captured late Sunday following a two-day manhunt authorities described as the largest in the state’s history. Boelter is accused of impersonating a police officer and gunning down former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their home outside Minneapolis. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz described the shooting as “a politically motivated assassination.”
Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, were shot earlier by the same gunman at their home nearby but survived.
Friends and former colleagues interviewed by AP described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for President Donald Trump. Records show Boelter registered to vote as a Republican while living in Oklahoma in 2004 before moving to Minnesota where voters don’t list party affiliation.
Boelter will face state and potentially federal charges. He was arrested after being spotted on a trail camera.
Multiple news accounts list Boelter’s past jobs, a visit to Africa, his service on a couple of local boards, and his armed home security business that had no business. “He had no employees. He wasn’t doing security for anybody. It wasn’t his job,” David Carlson, a roommate and lifelong friend, told reporters:
He said Boelter supported Trump and tuned in to programming from Alex Jones’s conspiracy-filled Infowars site. Boelter would be offended if anyone called him a Democrat, his roommate said.
What’s not being reported to date is how Boelter’s religious affiliations may have influenced his decision to draft what appears to be a list of 70 potential targets that included “politicians, civic and business leaders, and Planned Parenthood centers, according to law enforcement officials.”
Minnesota assassination suspect Vance Boelter seems to be associated with the authoritarian, charismatic Christian right. 2 months ago, The Christ for The Nations Institute (CFNI) honored Cindy Jacobs, a top apostle and prophet in the theocratic New Apostolic Reformation movement.
The rest is speculation that Boelter is at least NAR adjacent. More may come out after police interrogate Boelter and after reporters dig into his past.
We’ve written plenty here on the NAR. Fred Clarkson and Andre Gagne published last year “A Reporter’s Guide to the New Apostolic Reformation,” describing the movement as “hiding in plain sight” and off news reporters’ regular beats.
Carlson spoke on Sunday with reporters outside his residence:
“I just want you guys to just not say ‘crazy right-winger gone nuts’ and that was all he is, you know,” he said. “It just bothers me that that’s his legacy, but I knew — I knew him my whole life. He was a good guy.”
He broke into tears and stepped back into his home.
Expect a great flood of whataboutism from the right. Luigi Mangione will figure prominently. And Thomas Crooks, the Butler, Pa. sniper, no matter his mental state or the muddiness surrounding his motives. Boelter will be disowned. Because conservatism never fails.
Netanyahu is really going the extra mile to manipulate Trump into joining his war against Iran:
In an exclusive interview on a special edition of Fox News’ Special Report Sunday, the prime minister tried to drum up support for Israel’s strikes on Iran by linking the nation to the assassination attempts on the U.S. president.
“These people who chant, death to America, tried to assassinate President Trump twice, kill 241 of your Marines in Beirut, killed and injured thousands of American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, try to bomb a restaurant in Washington D.C., chant death to America, burn the American flag, do you want these people to have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to your cities?” Netanyahu said. “Of course not. So we’re defending ourselves, but we’re also defending the world.”
Iran did threaten Trump. But this seems like a stretch. I’m sure Trump would buy it but he’s got some MAGA types around him who don’t want to escalate (like Vance) and he’s TACO anyway. But Bibi does have his number.
The U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security and Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability have announced the launch of an investigation into more than 200 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), including two major Catholic nonprofits, that provided taxpayer-funded services to migrants during the Biden administration.
Catholic Charities USA and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) are among those named in the investigation. According to a June 11 press release, the probe will investigate whether the NGOs “used taxpayer dollars to facilitate illegal activity” by migrants who entered the U.S. during the Biden administration.
All the NGOs named in the investigation have been sent a letter requesting that they fill out a survey. The letter also expresses concern that some of the NGOs continue to actively advise “illegal aliens on how to avoid and impede law enforcement officials, which can only be seen as an attempt to undermine the work of the federal government.”
I’m so old that I remember when the Republicans had a complete nervous breakdown over the alleged targeting of certain groups during the Obama administration:
Here’s some background information about the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal involving the targeting of certain groups. In May 2013, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration released a report indicating the targeting involved delaying the processing of applications by certain conservative groups and requesting information from them that was later deemed unnecessary.
The Justice Department was investigating circumstances surrounding the disappearance of IRS emails that Republicans believed could shed light on the possible targeting of conservative and other political groups by the agency.
The Justice Department closed its two-year investigation in October 2015. No charges were brought against former IRS official Lois Lerner or anyone else at the agency.
The investigation into the email disappearance, which the IRS said was due to a crash of Lerner’s hard drive, was part of a wider criminal probe of whether any IRS employees broke the law in unfairly singling out specific political groups for extra scrutiny.
Two hundred ninety-six applications by groups seeking tax-exempt status were flagged for further review. About 75 groups had names with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in them.
Now the Trump administration is going after The Catholic Church for failing to follow its policies.
I would guess there will be no pushback from the alleged Christians on the right. Their Savior tells them that persecuting immigrants is their duty. And I’m not talking about Jesus Christ.
Easily? Yeah, sure. He’s a paper tiger and after yesterday’s lame birthday parade he made the U.S military look like one as well. (It isn’t but Trump stupid little display might have made some people think it is.)
He wants a “deal.” Of course. He thinks foreign policy and national security is like branding some mediocre resort in the Bahamas. He’s completely out of his depth and so is everyone around him.
On Saturday night, Trump wrote on his Truth Social account that the U.S. “had nothing to do with the attack on Iran” but stressed that if Iran attacks U.S. interests in the Middle East, he will order a harsh retaliation.
White House officials say Trump is still trying to prevent further escalation of the current war and resume talks with Iran on a nuclear deal.
Sunday’s latest round of nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran was canceled on Saturday.
What he is saying: “Iran and Israel should make a deal, and will make a deal, just like I got India and Pakistan to make…we will have PEACE, soon, between Israel and Iran! Many calls and meetings now taking place,” Trump wrote Sunday on his Truth Social account.
Israel has asked the Trump administration to join the war with Iran in order to eliminate its nuclear program, Axios reported on Saturday.
A U.S. official said Saturday that the administration is currently not considering Israel’s request.
On Sunday, Trump told ABC News’ Rachel Scott that the U.S. is not involved in the war but added that “it’s possible we could get involved.”
Two Israeli officials said that there are currently no serious diplomatic initiatives to try and stop the war.
One of the officials said that Israel currently isn’t interested in a ceasefire because it still hasn’t implemented all its objectives — especially when it comes to destroying Iran’s nuclear program.
For the record, he didn’t stop the India Pakistan skirmish but he’s taking credit for it anyway. Of course.
Everyone, including Iran, thought that Israel would not attack as long as Trump was engaged in nuclear talks. He was sending Witkoff there this weekend and it would be seen as a slap to do it under those circumstances. Israel did it anyway, apparently with Trump’s tacit agreement in exchange for not killing Iran’s Supreme Leader.
The Israelis played him, making him look weak by issuing a threat they were probably never planning to carry out. Needless to say Trump had to cancel the “talks” (which his amateur envoy was bungling anyway) and now he’s just standing on the sidelines getting baited by Israel to join the war and threatened by Iran if he does it.
He’s just paralyzed. Everyone’s supposed to just stand down in the face of his big swinging … threats and they aren’t doing it.
Never forget that there was a hard fought negotiation with Iran that was working until he came along and canceled it simply because it was an Obama policy. (He has no idea what he’s doing so he just reverses his predecessor’s work and calls it a victory.)This is the result.
Trump looking absolutely inconsolable at his fascist-themed 79th birthday party which no one turned up to other than those who had to because he's their boss. pic.twitter.com/3BqYLrn8f0
Rolling Stone: On Saturday, President Donald Trump held a hideously expensive military parade in Washington, D.C., on his birthday. Trump and his top officials stood on a stage at the National Mall behind two tanks, before two large digital American flags. Military bands and troops, some on horses, some in vehicles, some in tanks, others in Howitzers, marched in the streets. So did a few robot dogs. An army parachute team jumped down. Helicopters flew over. Drones flew by. There were many, many tanks.
The spectacle was billed as honoring the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday — and planners put in admirable effort to sell this fiction, with processions designed to honor key times in American military history. In reality, the event was just one part of the Trump administration’s vast, billion-dollar government effort to make the leader feel good about himself.
The weekend’s pageantry, which some administration officials referred to as “Donald Trump’s birthday parade” behind closed doors, fulfilled the president’s longtime desire for a grand military parade. Starting at the Pentagon in Virginia, the troops in the parade — who honored the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War — had to walk for about two-and-a-half miles.
Trump sat next to his wife Melania and the former Fox News host, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. At points, Trump stood alone in front onstage, saluting troops marching as the 1st Cavalry Division marched by. At another point, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was pictured yawning on C-SPAN. The military officials shown on C-SPAN spoke with reverence about the Global War on Terror.
Late in the event, Trump stood at a podium onstage and swore in 250 new or reenlisting troops. “Welcome to the United States Army and have a great life,” Trump said after they recited the Oath of Enlistment. “Thank you very much. Have a great life.”
After two hours, the event reached its logical conclusion: political speeches. J.D. Vance went first. “June 14 is of course the birthday of the Army,” Vance said. “It is, of course, the birthday of the president of the United States. And Happy Birthday, Mr. President.” He delivered the laugh line of the night, “It’s also my wedding anniversary,” he said before immediately leaving the stage.
Finally, Trump spoke. He praised the army — and armies of years past. “Our soldiers never give up, never surrender and never ever quit. They fight, fight, fight and they win, win, win,” Trump said, in what seemed like an obvious reference to his own declaration of “Fight, Fight, Fight,” after a failed assassination attempt grazed his ear in Butler, Pennsylvania, during a campaign event last year.
“We’re the hottest country in the world right now,” Trump said. “Our country will soon be greater and stronger than ever before.” He said America is “blessed beyond words by this valued legion of army warriors.”
He continued, “No matter the obstacles, our warriors will charge into battle. They will plunge into the crucible of fire, and they will seize the crown of victory, because the United States of America will always have the grace of Almighty God and the iron will of the United States Army. Congratulations to everybody. We love our country. We’ve never done better. Thank you. God bless you. God bless the army and God bless America.”
Trump stood for a moment beside his wife, Melania, before Trump campaign regular Lee Greenwood sang “God Bless the U.S.A.” (Trump and Greenwood sell a bible together.) “Happy birthday Mr. President,” Greenwood said at one point.
When he was done, attendees started singing happy birthday to Trump near the stage.
Even before the speech component, the C-SPAN feed gave off a vibe that alternated between military recruitment video and softcore Trump propaganda. Video played several times of Trump giving speeches. Occasionally, a small banner popped up that said: “Video courtesy of America 250.” The nonprofit America 250, which is helping organize the ongoing publicly-funded campaign celebrating the country’s semiquincentennial, has been taken over by Trump allies and one of his campaign operatives.
Corporate America did their part. “Special thanks to our sponsor Lockheed Martin,” the MC said around 6:30 p.m., shouting out America’s biggest defense contractor. The MC later thanked “our special sponsor Coinbase,” the cryptocurrency exchange. President Trump sure loves crypto — he reported in his financial disclosure Friday that he made $57 million in the final months of 2024 after he and his family launched their own crypto exchange, World Liberty Financial. (That was before he launched his own $TRUMP meme coin.)
Around 7 p.m., the big screens onstage that displayed the American flags turned to logos for UFC, the mixed martial arts business. Later, the MC thanked “special sponsor Palantir,” a contractor hired to help Trump compile data on Americans across federal agencies.
Rock music was the soundtrack of the parade, including AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” during the War on Terror section. There were instrumentals from the Heart song “Barracuda” and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”
The military parade was overseen by the American commander-in-chief as he conducts a militarized crackdown on immigrants in Los Angeles, California, driving protests. He sent in National Guard troops and Marines not because their presence is necessary to keep the peace, but as a show of force — and as a test run for operations in other states and cities, should the president feel angry enough to launch them, likely illegally.
At 2,000 locations across the country, protesters held a “No Kings” Day to voice their anger toward the president. About 20,000 people gathered in downtown Los Angeles, undeterred by law enforcement’s use of non-lethal weapons on earlier protests and the president’s escalation by sending in troops.
Law enforcement largely left protesters alone for much of the day, but they deployed tear gas in the Atlanta area and arrested eight people, Fox 5 Atlanta reported.
For an event that shut down much of central Washington D.C., closed key roads, and reportedly cost up to $45 million, the promise of a spectacle of America’s military might — that just coincidentally happened to fall on Trump’s birthday — didn’t draw out legions of his fans. Instead the crowd of supporters, servicemembers, curious locals, and military adjacent spectators who braved the oppressive heat and humidity of a post-thunderstorm D.C. managed to just fill out their allotted side of the street over several blocks in front of the White House, with plenty of room to spare.
In front of the central stage a crowd befitting a midsize concert gathered in view of Jumbotrons. The lawns surrounding the Washington monument — which have hosted countless inaugurations, protests, concerts, and gatherings, were largely unused overflow space.
When the TV broadcast showed the crowd risers along the parade route, they were sparsely filled. The National Park Service issued permits for 250,000 people for the National Mall festival and the military parade. An aerial parade of historic military aircraft flew above the National Mall, traversing a course from Lincoln to Washington that — despite clear anticipation of crowds by event organizers — was more empty field and food truck line than crowd.
Though rock music blared on TV, the parade itself was eerily quiet. One video posted on X shows tanks squeaking past nearly silent crowds, sounding like a grocery cart in need of grease.
In the weeks leading up to his birthday and the parade, Trump told close associates that protesters were going to try to overshadow the military parade, including in the media coverage, in D.C. and elsewhere, and that he was determined not to let that happen, a source with knowledge of the matter and another person briefed on it tell Rolling Stone.
Millions of people reportedly participated in “No Kings” parades Saturday across the country. As the D.C. military parade took place, hundreds of protesters stood outside the federal building in downtown Los Angeles. People had been dancing around, before hundreds of cops circled the four-block square without warning or announcement, leading to a tense stand-off, according to a Rolling Stone reporter on the ground. Flash bangs went off, and police used tear gas and smoke grenades to clear protesters
Based on hundreds of crowd-sourced records of No Kings Day event turnout, and extrapolating for the cities where we don't have data yet, it looks like roughly 4-6m people protested Trump across the U.S. yesterday.
Mobilized anti-Trump resistance is exceeding 2017 levels.
The result is, we think, the most comprehensive source for the turnout at yesterday's No Kings Day events.
This is not an _official_ estimate by any means. But we do think it's more credible than relying on one single source or a finger-in-the-wind org guesstimate.
We have that information for yesterday, and we also have it for every day since January 1, 2017. That’s thanks to data gathered and published regularly by the Crowd Counting Consortium, a joint project of Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut.
According to the CCC, there have been over 15,000 political protests since Donald Trump’s second inauguration this January. Over the same period in 2017, during Trump’s first term, there were barely over 5,000 protests.
Protests have been broad, and large. With our preliminary counting, the turnout at yesterday’s No Kings Day events nationwide rivals, and may exceed, turnout for the 2017 Women’s March. The 2017 Women’s March drew between 3.3 and 5.6 million people, depending on the estimate, making it the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. Our early numbers suggest No Kings Day may be in that range.
Total turnout in the No Kings Day protests is likely to fall short of the famous 3.5% population threshold for forcing action via mass protest. But the cool thing about that work is that the scholars find that smaller mobilizations of 1-1.5% of the population still have a 40-60% chance of accomplishing their goals.
Both the number of protests and their massive size are warnings for the Trump administration, which has routinelytrampled the limits ofpublic opinion during the president’s second term. On immigration, deportations, Medicaid/social spending, and democracy, the president has pushed policy much farther right than sanctioned by the U.S. public. The mobilized resistance across the country on Saturday is a real-world sign of backlash to his unpopular agenda.
Yes, the “No Kings” rallies on Saturday were massive, with millions taking to the streets in the U.S. and abroad. Yes, Donald Trump’s birthday parade was a costly joke. (He fell asleep.) And yes, he made the U.S. Army look like a third-world outfit. But that doesn’t mean he’s done. Not by a long shot.
Trump 2.0 has already put in place a surveillance regime that, while it may not yet rival China’s, is still autocratic by nature and a grave insult to the American spirit. A Bluesky thread from Friday night foreshadowed this story today from The Guardian:
An Australian man who was detained upon arrival at Los Angeles airport and deported back to Melbourne says United States border officials told him it was due to his writing on pro-Palestine protests by university students.
Alistair Kitchen said he left Melbourne on Thursday bound for New York and was detained for 12 hours and interrogated by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials during the stopover in Los Angeles.
The 33-year-old said he was “clearly targeted for politically motivated reasons” and said officials spent more than 30 minutes questioning him about his views on Israel and Palestine including his “thoughts on Hamas”.
– They were waiting for me when I got off the plane- They knew (or it felt like they knew) everything about me- I had cleaned up my online presence expecting ad hoc digital sweeps; I was not prepared for their sophistication- Sophistication almost certainly facilitated by Palantir
“The CBP explicitly said to me, the reason you have been detained is because of your writing on the Columbia student protests,” he told Guardian Australia on Sunday. The US Department of Homeland Security has been contacted for comment.
The creative writing student had live in New York City and was getting his masters at Columbia. He wrote about the strudent protests on his personal blog (including some choice words for Donald Trump’s deportation regime) before returning to Australia in 2024. Cleaning up some of his social media comments was of no use.
“They had already prepared a file on me and already knew everything about me,” he said.
Kitchen said he agreed to give officials the passcode for his phone, which he now regretted.
“I had at that time, the wrong and false hope that once they realised I was, you know, just a Australian writer and not a threat to the US that they would let me in,” he said. “But then they took my phone away and began downloading it and searching it.”
Kitchen said he was “terrified of retribution and reprisal from the US government” for speaking out about his experience but he wanted people to know what had happened.
He urged other Australians who were detained upon arrival into the US to accept “immediate deportation” instead of handing their phones over the border officials.
I did not carry a sign on Saturday, but if I had it would have contained just two words: YOU’RE NEXT.
The message above was ubiquitous at “No Kings” protests
Captured in a hot mic moment, Donald Trump says that when North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un speaks, “his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”
The shootings in Minnesota of two Democrat legislators and their spouses, plus the exchange of missile fire between Israel and Iran, marred the split screen moment organizers of the 2000+ “No Kings” protests had hoped for on the day of Dear Leader’s long-awaited $45 million military parade. Still, the New York Times framed the moment by placing an image of New York City’s “No Kings” protest above one from Trump’s homage to himself.
One of these is more American than the other. #nokings
The protests were overwhelmingly peaceful, but marred by a shooting in Salt Lake City and declaration of an unlawful assembly outside City Hall in Los Angeles.
News outlets reported protesters in the millions in cities large and small. San Diego alone estimated 60,000. Axios reported 100,000 in Philadelphia and 75,000 in Chicago. Dallas police estimated 11,000 there. 50,000 or more in New York City. The Guardian reports that in the 800-person town of Pentwater, Michigan, 400 people joined the protest per the No Kings coalition. Trump’s people had hoped for 200,000 or more, but drew far less, and those numbers were dwarfed by the “No Kings” protests.
BREAKING: Look at some of these estimated ATTENDANCE numbers from the No Kings protests around the country yesterday. Trump is ANGRY!
– 200,000 in NYC with 50,000 in Manhattan alone.
– 200,000 in Los Angeles 25,000 at Civic Center alone
Trump was hoping for a massive, North Korea-style display. Instead, his parade, structured as a walk through U.S. military history featuring obsolete equipment from past wars, made the U.S. look like a third-world military power. The crowd was largely silent through the slow, boring display as antique tanks squeaked past empty bleachers. At one point, the musical accompaniment was an instrument al version of the Creedence Clearwater Revival’s antiwar hit “Fortunate Son.” Really. One professional event organizer posted a long X thread on all the parade’s logistical failures.
It was a long day here with morning and afternoon rallies. Perhaps 8,000 taking over the streets and police standing back.
The trick now will be to keep up the pressure. One and done won’t topple a dictator.
Update:
Based on crowd-sourced records of No Kings Day event turnout, and extrapolating for the cities where we don't have data yet, it looks like roughly 4-6 million people protested Trump across the U.S. yesterday. That's nearly 2% of the U.S. pop!Mobilized anti-Trump resistance is exceeding 2017 levels
